


there’s a war inside my core (love me like i’m not made of stone)

by possibilist



Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: & mentions of abuse, BUT IT IS ALSO V FLUFFY I PROMISE, F/F, although nothing is graphic, it deals unflinchingly with ptsd so, this deals with ptsd
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-12-22
Updated: 2014-12-22
Packaged: 2018-03-02 21:32:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,507
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2826824
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/possibilist/pseuds/possibilist
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"But you know: she isn’t to be fixed, and no amount of your care can take away three hundred and some-odd years of trauma. But you’re going to try your hardest to make sure tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, are softer than those before."</p><p>based off of this little headcanon from my tumblr: fierce bby feminist laura hollis stepping up big-time to address, & help carmilla address, ptsd. bc it's a big thing. hollstein angst & definitely so much fluff too. trigger warnings for ptsd-related stuff.</p>
            </blockquote>





	there’s a war inside my core (love me like i’m not made of stone)

**Author's Note:**

> first of all, i just think all of this is super important to address for hollstein but also just what you can do on either side of the equation: if you're a victim of trauma or if you're the partner of a victim of trauma, there are many, many ways to make the days softer & better &, bit by bit, a little more healed. (so there are definitely some tips & tricks in here lol)
> 
> also: thanks to imagine-some-gays & angeltrouble on tumblr as always for geeking out with me.

**there’s a war inside my core (love me like i’m not made of stone)**

.

_will you love my scars so i can heal/ even though it hurts/ love me when it storms, love me when i fall/ every time it breaks, every time it’s torn/ love me deep  
—_lykke li, ‘love me like i’m not made of stone’

//

When you’re sixteen, your dad sits you down with your aunt—his younger sister Sarah—and says, “I pray to  _god_ you aren’t having sex yet,” which makes you turn bright red, because  _no,_ you are  _not_ having sex, but he continues. “But if you are, I—well, I’m not really one to talk to about all of this, but I want you to be safe, and, um, your aunt said. Well,  _you know_.”

You nod, because even you  _don’t_ know, you just  _really_ want this to be over, and he nods and then walks out of your bedroom and your aunt lets out a little laugh.

“He means very well,” she says.

“I know,” you say, then scoot back on your bed, cross your legs. Your aunt faces you in the same position and smiles, which makes you smile too.

“So—I assume you know about condoms, birth control, all of that stuff?”

You’d taken health class in grade 9, sat through watching your poor teacher stretch a condom over a banana—which you  _never_ want to eat again—while, like, every boy in your class snickered. But you’d paid attention, partially because you need good grades to get into a good college, and partially because you really should know this stuff, and it  _shouldn’t_ be embarrassing. You know you’re gay—or at least you’re, like, maybe 97% sure, and you’d only learned, really, about straight sex, but still—the more knowledge, the better, right?

“Yeah, I do.”

Your aunt says, “Awesome. That’s good. And—do you need birth control? We don’t have to talk about it to your dad or anything.”

“No, I—no,” you say, “I promise.”

“Okay,” she says with a small smile. She’s been one of your favorite people in the world for a long time, especially since your mom died, and you’ve not really come out to anyone, even though you’re not ashamed or anything; you just don’t have a girlfriend, and your town is small and everything. But your aunt lives in Berlin with her husband and their sun, and she’s a really great lawyer, so. She starts to go on: “There’s a lot more to safe sex than just, like, preventing pregnancy, though, okay?”

You nod and then you very quietly ask, “Um, Aunt Sarah?” before she can continue.

Her face is concerned quickly, and she reaches out to take your hand. 

You feel sick all of a sudden, your heart is pounding so hard, and then you say, “I just—this talk is super great and we should definitely go on but, just—I’m gay.”

She lets out a sigh of what you’re pretty sure is relief and a bright smile lights up her face. 

“Oh honey, that’s great,” she says, then pulls you into a hug. You feel tears prick at your eyes and she shushes you gently, rubs your back. “Thank you for telling me, Laura,” she says when you finally pull back and wipe your tears.

“I, um, yeah, I thought, you know, um, that might be, yeah, helpful information for this?”

She laughs a little bit. “Well I could’ve skipped the condom question.”

You laugh too, and your chest  _aches_ for your mom, but Sarah is still holding your hand, and you know she loves you a lot.

“Well now that I know you’ve obviously figured out the lovelier option in terms of any romance whatsoever,” she says, which makes you laugh harder, and she squeezes your hand. “Safe sex isn’t just about preventing pregnancies or STDs. Especially in your case, now, I suppose, but—really, it’ll apply to anyone of any gender, okay?”

You nod, and you listen closely while she explains verbal consent, how to choose a safe word with your partner, what yes/maybe/no lists are and that you should check in often to see if they’ve changed. She also says, “I’m not super sure about protection for lesbians, but we can look into that together if you want.”

You end up laughing and smiling and also learning quite a bit, and it makes you feel like there’s much less weight on your shoulders afterward in a way you’d have never really expected.

/

You take an AP Psychology class in grade 12, basically as a last push to get some credits before you go to university, but also because it sounds interesting.

Your teacher ends up being super lame, though, and you don’t really learn that much, but you do read about PTSD, because you’re still— _still_ —uncomfortable with cars.

But really, that’s it, and you do your final project on cognitive psychology and linguistics, because cars seem limited and avoidable for the most part, and the world is, mostly, yours to be brave in.

/

You basically figure out that Carmilla has PTSD within ten hours of surveillance, although you basically choose to ignore it because she is an  _asshole_ and in the same ten hours she eats four of your takeout meals, fucks two girls—you fast forward through those parts with your eyes closed and then immediately delete them, but, still—and steals six pairs of your socks.

Retrospectively, you were also an asshole, because you’d seen her have a panic attack from the power cutting out—you’d fast-forwarded through that too—and she has a lot of nightmares, goes out at night and comes back drunk off her ass at like 5 am, doesn’t take the elevators when you go with her to a few dorm building meetings. You ignored these things, because it was easier, but then they clicked into place when she told you: Ell, the coffin, being trapped in choking darkness through two wars.

But still: there are girls missing, and you’re falling in love with other sparkling parts of her, and LaFontaine has been pod-peopled.

And you have a world to save.

/

It doesn’t  _really_ hit you until you’re on the train to your dad’s, because her ribs on her left side are kind of squishy and inconsistent and kind of like lumps of gravel under her skin when you accidentally lean into them, and she gasps and your stomach rolls, but you switch sides, and she clamps down on your hand  _hard_ when the sun starts to set.

Your compartment is small—you’d gotten some of the last tickets, so you weren’t able to be picky—and you try kissing her again, because, hey, that’d distract you, after all. She kisses you so gently, though, when you try to deepen it, and you nod and don’t push: you have  _no idea_ , you realize, the suffering she's been through: she’s lost her entire family twice, she been buried beneath tons of earth three times.

/

You don’t really know enough about PTSD to bring anything up yet, really, but you do know how to establish safe sex practices, which you set about to doing the second night you’re at your dad’s, partially because you are horny as  _fuck_  and you really, really want to have sex soon, but also because, like, it’s absolutely what you  _should_ do, what both of you deserve.

“Carm,” you say, patting the space next to you on your bed.

She smiles slightly and  _glides_  over from the window seat, which is kind of infuriating, that she can move like that and that you’re supposed to just  _not_ kiss her all of the time, but whatever.

She curls up next to you—she’s actually taken her boots off, and she’s wearing these goofy green socks with snow people on them under her jeans, a huge soft dark teal cashmere sweater which makes her even more beautiful.

And then she kisses you gently, so softly, but—your dad has instituted an open door policy, and this is  _not_ the purpose of this exercise.

So you push her back with a little smile and a soft peck to her forehead, and then hand her a piece of paper and a pen. 

“We’re going to make our lists,” you say, and her eyebrow shoots up.

“You’ve lost me, I’m afraid, cupcake.”

You sigh. “Well, you know verbal consent, right?”

“Yeah,” she says, “of course.”

You shrug. “I figure since we’re going to be sleeping together at some point, we should make our lists.”

She kind of just stares at you.

And your heart sinks, because, “No one—no one has made one with you before?”

She shakes her head and glances at her hands, which you take.

“Hey, that’s fine, this is my first one too.”

She smiles at you in this way that makes you completely amazed, because she’s beautiful and she’s looking at you like  _that_ , different than seduction eyes because, yeah, she’s in love with you. 

“First we should pick safe words, though,” you say, “and write them at the top of our lists so we don’t forget.”

She swallows but then nods resolutely, and you end up laughing about absolutely ridiculous safe word choices, and for some reason she decides on  _picture frame_ , which, whatever, you’ll remember, and that’s something you’re not going to say during sex. You pick  _tea mug_ , just because it makes her laugh, and you write them at the top of your papers.

And then you say, “Okay, so the list has three columns: yes, maybe, and no. And it’s simple, basically: things you’re totally sure about doing during sex, things you  _might_ want to do if we talk about them beforehand, and things you definitely don’t want to do. So, write your things down, and I’ll write mine, and then we’ll talk about them, okay?”

She nods, and then she bends over her paper seriously.

It makes you smile, and you notice that she’s left-handed, which, for some reason, makes her even more endearing, because immediately you see her smudge ink on the heel of her hand with a grimace.

You fill out your list, and it’s pretty simple stuff, because a lot of things go in  _maybe_ , mostly because you haven’t tried them and you think you’d like to, but if Carmilla doesn’t then that’s fine. Basic stuff goes in  _yes_ , as does SHOWER SEX!!! :), and really only physically painful stuff goes in  _no_.

You read everything over and you’re pretty satisfied, and when you look over, Carmilla smiles at you gently and puts her paper down between you. 

There are, like,  _four things_ on the list, though, and they’re fine—‘fingers & mouth’ is in  _yes_ , ‘strap-ons’ is in  _maybe_ , and ‘spanking’ is in  _no_ —but you look up at her and show her your list, and then say, “The point of this isn’t to be embarrassed or anything, I promise. Like, I’m a virgin, I’m not going to judge you or anything, I just want us to be safe and comfortable because I do  _not_ want to hurt you. Ever. Okay?”

She still looks hesitant.

“Carm, look at me,” you say, then hook your finger under her chin and softly pull her eyes to yours. “You can write down more. I won’t go anywhere.”

She nods and sniffles and takes her paper back, and you kiss the top of her head and then head downstairs to make yourself a cup of cocoa and heat her half a mug of hot milk—apparently, that’s how she most likes to drink her blood in the winter, and hey, you’re not going to question that one—and then you walk slowly back up the stairs and wait at your doorway when you see her reading her list over, and you don’t walk in until she puts down her pen.

“Write your masterpiece?” you ask, then grab her stash of blood from your closet and pour it into the milk, hand her the mug, which she hums in appreciation at when she takes a sip. 

“Thanks,” she murmurs, and you kiss her temple, then pick up her list.

She stiffens next to you, and you make sure to keep your face even as you read a  _really long list_ of  _no_ ’s, most of which make your chest ache and your hands burn, because you are immensely sad but also  _angry_ —for as much of an asshole as Carmilla ever was, she didn’t deserve some of what you’re sure has been done to her on this list. Tears burn at the back of your eyes and then she whispers, “I’m sorry.”

Your head shoots up. “What?”

“I didn’t—you shouldn’t have to know those things and I shouldn’t have written them, because it’s not like you’d do any of them anyway—”

To be fair, most of them you’d have never even  _thought_ of, but ‘gagging’ was definitely on your  _yes_ list, so—“Carmilla, stop.”

She takes your lists and puts them on your nightstand and then curls into your side.

“You do  _not_ need to apologize for your honesty. It’s brave. Thank you for trusting me.”

She nods slightly and then tugs you down, and you reach across her and put your cocoa on the nightstand before climbing out of bed.

She pouts and then you say, “I can’t wait to see what you actually look like in pajamas,” and she lets out a real little laugh, kissing you softly after you fling a pair of burgundy flannel pants with penguins on them at her.

When you settle in under your covers, she says, “Thank you, Laura.”

You shrug. “Of course.”

She shakes her head like you have  _no idea_ what you’re talking about, and then she kisses you very, very softly before turning around so you can hold her without a word.

She laces your fingers together over and holds your hands to her chest, and you stay awake until you’re sure she’s asleep.

/

A few nights later, when you wake up at 3 am to pee, your bed is empty, and you frown. Her phone is, predictably, on the nightstand, and so you lay back on the pillows, randomly flick through tumblr on your iPad—a present from your aunt and uncle—and you’re drowsily into two episodes of  _House of Cards_ on Netflix when you hear your window open and see her climbing through.

“You’re awake,” she says.

“Yeah, I was worried.” You put down your iPad and stand.

She smells like snow and pine and whiskey and perpetual lavender, and she’s  _freezing_  and definitely drunk, and you don’t really ask where she’s gone, or why she left in the middle of the night: you’re tired, and her eyes are sunken and sad and so  _old_.

“Come on, then,” you say, lead her to your bathroom and help her out of her clothes. The knuckles on her hands are cracked and red down to the bone, and you resist the urge to either gasp or puke, and she lets you bandage them gently after you’ve dried her hair gently with a towel.

“I’m tired,” she admits, her voice cracking, and you nod, and she curls up, her back to you again, but shrugs you off when you try to hold her. 

You curl up and try to fall asleep, but you know she’s still awake, and it sits like a pit in your stomach: she’s the loveliest kind of monster, in the way that angels are monsters: they signal something miraculous about to happen. She  _is_ miraculous, the fact that she’s yours seems almost more so, and you don’t want to try to denounce that, or make her denounce that, or make her human. You want her to understand that you accept her multitudes, her being, you love that—just like she does for you—her contradictions are different, but they’re no less special or beautiful.

But you know: she isn’t to be fixed, and no amount of your care can take away three hundred and some-odd years of trauma.

But you’re going to try your hardest to make sure tomorrow, and the day after that, and the day after that, are softer than those before.

/

You try to watch what some of her triggers are: elevators and all other small dark spaces, action films with explosions, thunderstorms, when you—one time—pin her wrists above her head while you’re making out on your dad’s couch in the den.

She’s safe-worded immediately, and you’d almost panicked, because that wasn’t on the list and you hadn’t expected that and you don’t even really know  _what_ to do afterward.

But you end up telling her, “It’s okay, Carmilla, look at me, it’s fine, you’re okay, we’re fine.”

You watch reruns of  _F.R.I.E.N.D.S._ and she calms down pretty quickly and kisses you softly a few times before dozing off on your shoulder.

/

Some days it’s like nothing has ever happened to her, because she laughs with your dad at your—admittedly—terrible James Bond impression, dances with you on your freezing cold back porch because there are fairy lights and stars—your aunt sees you through the kitchen window and gives you a thumbs up before heading back upstairs.

Carmilla is also definitely still an infuriating—albeit, now, really harmless—useless lesbian vampire, and she kind of sucks at helping with any kind of chore  _at all_.

But sometimes when she kisses you, it’s easy to forget.

She tastes sweet and heady, like cinnamon and roses, like she really is eighteen.

/

She flinches with every firework on New Year’s Eve, and when you kiss her that night, she tastes like tears and whiskey. She tastes like sting. She tastes like salt.

/

When you get back to Silas, your second day back before term starts, you march your way through the snow to the Student Health and Counseling Center and make an appointment to see a counselor because you’ve read so many things about PTSD online but you’re still at a loss as to how to actually  _talk_ to Carmilla about it, about when she gets angry and lashes out with hurtful comments, when she can’t kiss you, when she runs away at night and comes back drunk and bleeding somewhere.

You tell these things to Dr. Gilbert, who is elegant and tailored, with curly hair and rich dark skin, bright, kind eyes.

“My girlfriend has PTSD and I want to help her in the best ways I can,” you say.

Dr. Gilbert smiles at you and says, “You’re already helping her more than you know by being here and asking questions, just so you know.” 

You nod, because,  yeah, but—that’s what counselors are for, after all. 

“Let’s get started.”

/

You go back one more time, learn about comfort boxes—you start making a little list of what you want to put in Carmilla’s, and to start with, you buy a little cute stuffed black cat and get Perry to help you make a little yellow t-shirt for it, and you buy like four bags of Swedish Fish, which apparently Carmilla loves, as well as a jar of Nutella, and you frown when LaF hands you a six-pack of IPA, but—it’s better than liquor, right?—and, yeah, they’re right, at least for now.

But you still don’t know quite how to bring things up with Carmilla, because most days she’s so good—snarky and smart and quietly incredibly loving, leaving little notes in the pockets of your coats, helping you with your papers with only minimal sarcasm, picking you up from class with cocoa and plenty of dramatic eye rolls, and once when you kiss her hello some bro wolf whistles and Carmilla promptly flips him off.

So you don’t want to trigger something bad on a good day but still—bad days happen, and she really hasn’t been letting you in. Like, at all. You haven’t slept together, even though she hasn’t safe worded again, but you know she’s having trouble there too.

And you’re her girlfriend, her  _partner_ , and you just really want to help.

/

You come up with a  _brilliant_ idea when you’re finishing—crying at—the  _Legend of Korra_ finale with LaF while Carmilla is in some astrophysics seminar, and LaF seems to think it’s actually not a  _bad_ idea.

So Friday evening you’ve set up a blanket fort and gotten Indian from her favorite place when she gets in, grumbling, from advanced calculus.

Her eyes light up, though, even as she says, “Well that must’ve been a waste of your Friday afternoon.”

You laugh and kiss her and drag her into the fort, then say, “We’re going to watch  _Korra_ , you’ll love it.”

You know you basically have her wrapped around your finger, and she sighs and complains for a few minutes until you wrap your hand around her hip, trail it up her abdomen and then cup her breast before kissing her hard, then pulling back.

She’s frowning with a resigned sigh and says, “Play it,” before leaning back against the pillows and taking you into her arms.

By the time you get to episode three, she says, “This is really sweet, cupcake, but I know exactly what you’re doing.”

You sit up. “What?”

“Do you want to talk about PTSD?”

You try to act like that wasn’t  _exactly_  your plan, but she smiles softly, with some amusement and some sadness. “Well, yeah, but, listen, I just want to help, and I—”

She shakes her head and kisses you. “I know,” she says. “I know.”

/

You talk into the night about her triggers, and she even tells you why a few of them—outside of the coffin—are there.

And you smooth her hair and calm her with gentle kisses when her breath hitches, and you tell her about your counselor, and you’re afraid she’ll be mad, but instead she says, sort of in awe, “You’ve been going for  _me_?”

“Well, yeah,” you say. “You’re my partner.”

She shakes her head and says, “You are too good for this world, Laura Hollis.”

/

The next day you make a comfort box with her—or, rather, you make a comfort box while Carmilla pretends to read and blatantly ignore you, but when you come back from breakfast the next morning with Danny and Kirsch, she’s curled up around the little stuffed black cat, hair messy and eyelashes long and still, in underwear and a t-shirt, messily half-under the covers, and it’s kind of the cutest thing you’ve ever seen.

/

You don’t actually witness her have a flashback until a few weeks later, kind of in the middle of the night—and you know, by now, that that’s why she leaves and gets drunk and sort of injured sometimes—but by this time you’ve set up parameters because she’s  _terrified_ of hurting you physically if she gets disoriented, so mostly you sit across your dorm room and force her to tell you ever single thing in the room from where she’s curled up in the corner, her voice rough and hands clenched tight.

But she does name a lot of things until she doesn’t, and then she closes her eyes and stays remarkably still albeit a few whimpers, and you say her name for about thirty seconds before she jerks a little and looks to you with big eyes, confused.

“Carmilla,” you say, “you’re at Silas and I’m Laura, and—”

She’s off the floor and in your arms faster than you can even see, and she cries big, raking sobs.

“You’re okay,” you say, “you’re safe now, it’s safe.”

She shakes her head and looks up at you, and you’re confused for a moment before she says, “Thank you.”

“For what?”

“No one has ever—just—usually they last a lot longer than that.”

You shrug—things are  _heavy_ —and say, “Well, yeah, I’m magic,  _obviously_.”

She snorts a laugh and some snot comes out of her nose, and she pulls a face before rushing to grab some tissues in the bathroom before coming back to where you’ve reclined in the bed.

“Wanna c’mere, miss sexy snot?”

She rolls her eyes and says, “From the girl in a Farmer’s Market t-shirt.”

You kiss her forehead with a laugh as she—sexily, admittedly—crawls to you and then collapses on top of you.

“Carmilla,” you say, laughing, because she’s too heavy to push off of you, and she’s acting completely unresponsive. “ _Carm_.”

She says, “You’re so comfy. Must be all those cookies,” into your collarbone, but she doesn’t move  _at all_.

You’re both laughing, though, and then you tickle her sides and she scoots off of you quickly—she’s  _really_ ticklish, which is one of your very favorite things about her, honestly—and you fall asleep laughing, and, yeah, sometimes things do get better.

/

It’s not quickly and it’s not always consistent, but the first time you have sex—you count the dorm bathroom and four subsequent orgasms in your dorm room as one time, because it’s a collective kind of thing—is so incredibly safe and consensual and  _sexy_ and sweet and, really, fun, that your heart unclenches a little, and you’re pretty sure hers does too.

She has bad days. Sometimes she comes home with broken hands at dawn, sometimes she has to stay in bed for longer than usual, sometimes you can’t touch her. They still happen, because she was abused for a  _really_ long time, in horrendous ways.

But she starts going to see Dr. Gilbert—with you, reluctantly, at first, and then on her own. She, without even telling you, tells LaFontaine and Perry about her experience with PTSD, because, yeah, you can’t deal with all of this on your own—and, it hits you when you come home from a really fun day with Kirsch helping to decorate a treehouse by the Zeta House—and she and Perry are meticulously cleaning your dorm.

Perry smiles gently when Carmilla grumbles, “It’s calming,  _whatever_ ,” before sulking to the kitchen to open a soda.

“Thank you,” she tells Perry, though, before she leaves, and Perry nods with a smile.

/

“No one has taken care of me like you do,” she says when spring is starting to breathe blooms.

“You’re learning how to take care of yourself, too,” you say—because it’s true.

“Yeah,” she says, rolling over on the blanket you’re sharing on the rooftop of the astronomy tower, “but you’ve helped me more than you’ll ever know, Laura.”

You kiss her and you take it to heart: because you think you have, you really do.

“I love you too, Carm,” you say, and you listen to her laugh and feel the easy rise and fall of her chest and the tiny stories she writes gently on your stomach, under your flannel, during the fireworks.

“I’m glad I’m here,” she says, and she doesn’t flinch once.


End file.
